Category: ideological culture

The Ominous Linkages

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Green New Deal, socialism, Greta Thunberg,

What does a 16-year-old Swedish girl have in common with a popular 29-year-old U.S. Representative?

Environmentalism and socialism.

The young woman is Greta Thunberg, who spear-headed a “global movement of schoolchildren striking to demand climate change action.” The Representative is AOC, er, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who last month launched her “Green New Deal.”

Sixteen-year-old Thunberg has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Rep. AOC hasn’t been nominated yet, but if Barack Obama could be awarded a Nobel merely for being elected. . . .

But back to that linkage: the Swedish youngster was nominated by three adult members of the Socialist Left Party; AOC calls herself a socialist.*

But what’s the deeper link?

The solution, apparently: socialists want to destroy capitalism, or at least commandeer it; and environmentalists obsessed about anthropogenic global warming believe it’s caused by burning fossil fuels and by bovine flatulence — both made worse by capitalism, which has allowed the masses (not just the elites) to harness petroleum for power as well as raise gigantic herds of cattle for eating and milk-production. The direct control that socialism entails serves, say its advocates, as the only way to curtail carbon emissions.

A more likely story? Socialism would make us so much poorer that it is inconceivable that most of us would be able to afford to drive cars or eat steaks or drink milk.

Regardless of their so-called “green” policy obsessions, Ms.Thunberg and Rep. AOC are green in a more profound sense, of lack of experience — the latter because she’s young, the former because she’s a miseducated ideologue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* It is also worth noting that the much of AOC’s much-ballyhooed Green New Deal has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with typical leftist social engineering.

New Green Deal, FAQ, socialism, environmentalism, global warming, climate change,

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, socialism

Accountability ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall

March Sanity

North Dakota, initiative, citizen initiative, ballot initiative, democracy, suppression

“A public debate on the merits of a measure can reveal its flaws,” the Bismarck Tribune calmly and reasonably editorialized yesterday, “and then we have to trust voters to do the right thing.”

“Why are some legislators so afraid to allow North Dakota voters to decide what is in their constitution?” an earlier Fargo Forum editorial asked. The Forum dubbed one bill — giving the legislature a partial veto on voter-enacted constitutional amendments — “The Voter Nullification Act.”

On the voter initiative, North Dakota’s elected representatives are of a much different mind than these newspapers or the people of North Dakota.

The Flickertail State is hardly alone on this.

Michigan’s legislature made their ballot initiative process more difficult in last December’s lame-duck session. Arkansas politicians have been stabbing at the initiative with rules and regulations for years, and they’re back at it this session. On a recent trip to the Missouri capitol, I heard elected officials privately argue that voters deciding issues directly — without going through the legislature — was a “bastardization” of our republic.

Take Idaho’s Senate Bill 1159, which would hike up the signature requirement from 6 to 10 percent of voters, a 67 percent increase, while also reducing by two-thirds the time allowed for petitioning. The legislation’s stated purpose? “[T]o increase voter involvement.”

“It is odd,” wrote former state Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones in the Idaho State Journal, “that some in the Legislature now wish to drive a stake into the heart of that people-driven legislative process.”

It’s not really very odd. Legislators routinely put their political self-interest before the people — especially when it comes to voters having a democratic check on their power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags ballot initiative, citizen initiative, democracy, initiative, North Dakota

ideological culture Popular too much government

The Hilarity of a Serious Threat

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 4, 2019
6 Comments on The Hilarity of a Serious Threat

socialism, comedy, tragedy, Bernie Sanders, democratic socialism

Is today’s politics tragic or comic?

Take the current Democratic Party obsession with socialism. There is nothing more tragic than full-blown socialism: mind-control and the snitch society; purges and mass starvation, with millions upon millions dead. But give them credit: the trendy new Democrats say they’re only for the Nordic Model of . . . well, the European term for it is social democracy.*

But they sure seem to push for evermore government.

Worse yet, they too often defend actual Communist countries — as Bernie Sanders (BS) has done.

This suggests an unfunny ending to their mad rush to power.

So the proud proclamations of the s-label from BS and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) should concern us, as should the eagerness with which the majority of Democratic presidential candidates have signed onto AOC’s over-the-top proposed takeover of the economy in her “Green New Deal.”

And yet . . . these politicians are absurd, on the face of it as well as when we drill down.

It’s hard not to regard absurdity as comic.

The b.s. doesn’t end with BS.

Sure, our current president is a comic figure, too. And the pathetic nature of most GOP movers and shakers on Capitol Hill make them worthy of satire.

But it is also the case that Trump is funny in a way no one else is: he is playing a role and making many chortle. On purpose.

Too bad we couldn’t move him from the Presidency to a new Constitutional role, like Troll-in-Chief. There he could ensure, through mockery alone, what he promised in his State of the Union Address: America will never become a socialist country.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Denmark, Sweden, etc., support extensive markets and a surprisingly hands-off approach to business — comparable to that of the U.S., and in some ways more lax — combined with extremely high taxes and vast transfers of wealth. You could call this “democratic socialism,” but . . . why?

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Tags Bernie Sanders, comedy, socialism, tragedy

ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Warren’s No Socialist

Elizabeth Warren, housing bubble, crash, regulations, finance

Senator Elizabeth Warren knows that when people trade, both sides gain. She made that clear last year, in a fascinating interview in The Atlantic. But then she went blithely on, saying that she could fix markets by creating a “level playing field.”

Markets create value, but Mrs. Warren asserts that “when the markets are not level playing fields, all that wealth is scraped in one direction.”

How? People are still trading, even in bumpy playing fields.

She turns to the crisis of 2008, when many people discovered that they had entered into unsustainable mortgages. She explains how her shiny new regulatory program leveled that playing field.

But her scheme did not even out the bumps in the mortgage industry that existed before the crash:

the moral hazard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
the previous congressional “fix” that pushed banks to accept poor people as good loan risks when they were not (in the name of racial justice, of course),
the regulatory rule that created ratings agencies sans competitive market incentives, and
the Federal Reserve policies that fed the whole housing bubble mania.

She just added another burdensome layer of government.

Politicans sure love to pile on.

Now she offers a new scheme, a child-care program that Reihan Salam, this week again in The Atlantic, says “risks increasing the federal deficit, driving up the cost of child care, and squeezing stay-at-home parents.”

And Mr. Salam says that last risk is one Warren should understand particularly well, since she had “made her reputation as a public intellectual by warning against it.”

Warren’s no socialist — she wants to “save capitalism”! Yet by only adding to government kludge, she might as well be one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags crash, Elizabeth Warren, housing bubble, markets, regulations

Accountability folly ideological culture partisanship

#YouToo?

Bill Clinton, impeachment, sexual, #metoo, sex, scandal

“Will Democrats regret if they don’t open an impeachment investigation?” NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked Heather McGhee, a distinguished senior fellow at Demos.

“It’s important, right?” Ms. McGhee responded. “And we can have, you know, Bill Clinton impeached for obstruction of justice about a sexual affair,” she added dismissively, comparing that to Trump’s possible crimes, which “are things that could amount to treason against the United States.”

“Treason” does seem more ominous than the affair President Bill Clinton had two-plus decades ago with 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

But aren’t we missing a “teachable moment” for the #MeToo Movement?

President Clinton perjured himself about his sordid fling during a deposition in a lawsuit brought by Arkansas state employee Paula Jones. She alleged that he, while serving as governor, had exposed himself and sexually harassed her. An awfully serious charge, for which Clinton paid $850,000 to settle.

“Paula Jones spoke out against the most powerful man in the world, and when his lawyers argued that a sitting president couldn’t be subject to a civil suit, she took them all the way to the Supreme Court and won,” Amanda Hess wrote late last year in The New York Times, two decades after the fact. “In another world, she would be hailed as a feminist icon. But not in this world — not yet.”

Democrats, progressives and much of the popular media ridiculed and attacked Ms. Jones back then — and are still sweeping her story under the rug.

Treating sexual harassment, abuse and assault in a partisan manner, ignoring the sins of your side, is a slap in the face to the #MeToo Movement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture Popular

Ever Again?

Sophie Scholl, White Rose, Nazis, Germany, Third Reich

Today marks a solemn anniversary. Seventy-six years ago — on Feb. 22, 1943 — three German students at the University of Munich were tried for treason by the Nazis, convicted and then executed, all in one day.

The method of execution: guillotine.

Days earlier, Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie had been caught distributing a leaflet at the university. It was damning — of the Nazi regime; and, from the perspective of that Nazi regime, of the Scholls: “In the name of German youth, we demand restitution by Adolf Hitler’s state of our personal freedom, the most precious treasure we have, out of which he has swindled us in the most miserable way.”

Hans had in his pocket a draft of another leaflet, in Christoph Probst’s handwriting. That seventh leaflet, never distributed, led to the arrest and execution of Christoph, along with Hans and Sophie.

The three were part of a cadre of students who wrote and distributed leaflets under the name The White Rose — a symbol of purity standing against the monstrous evil of the Third Reich. The leaflets decried the crimes of National Socialism, including the mass murder of Jews. And they urged Germans to rise up.

Three more members were later executed: Willi Graf, Alex Schmorell and Professor Kurt Huber. Another eleven were imprisoned.

Their resistance was ultimately futile, unsuccessful . . . but not pointless.

They would not remain cogs in the killing machine that had taken the most advanced society in the world to the depths of depravity. They took a stand against what George Orwell later characterized as “a boot stamping on a human face, forever.”

We often say, with earnest piety, “Never again.” But our dedication should be inspired by the White Rose. When we encounter tyranny, think of the Scholls and say “Again for Freedom.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. For an excellent account of The White Rose, consult the aptly titled A Noble Treason, by Richard Hanser. See also Jacob Hornberger’s The White Rose — A Lesson in Dissent. The Orwell quotation is from the dystopian novel 1984.

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Tags Germany, Nazis, Sophie Scholl, White Rose

general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies The Draft

The Opposite of Freedom

service, mandatory, draft, slavery, hearings, involuntary servitude

Do your young adult children need the government to take over their lives for, say, a year, to whip them into tip-top citizenship shape?

Forced service could be the new rite of passage into adulthood. Right after our kids finally get through high school or college, slap 12 months of “service to the nation” on them to help foster appreciation for the freedom . . . they had, instead, hoped to start enjoying.

Sound good?

No. Not even to the folks at the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service (NCMNPS). Appointed to advise Congress on whether to end draft registration or expand it to women, and whether to force all young people to give up a year of their lives doing military or civilian “national service” for the federal government, the commissioners seem to eschew compulsion.

Their emails, their website address expresses “inspire2serve.gov” . . . not “force2serve.gov.” Because inspiring people is noble, while conscription is despicable and wrong.

Commissioners talk about a “personal commitment,” “a culture of service,” and the “overwhelming desire to serve” they’ve found among young people. Is it all just a rouse in route to a recommendation to Congress that young people should be forced against their will into government service?

And not even to repel invading hordes, not for any real emergency, but for basic government make-work and pretend nation-building.

Tomorrow at American University in the nation’s capital, the commission is holding a public hearing entitled, “Should Service be Mandatory?”

No. Involuntary servitude is a stupid idea. And the opposite of freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags draft, hearings, mandatory, service, slavery

ideological culture national politics & policies Popular too much government

Greenlighting Socialism

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New Green Deal, socialism

Can we blame U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), really?

A decade of quantitative easing, along with trillion-dollar annual deficits run up recently by congressional Republicans, have paved a debt-ridden road upon which she hopes her massive Green New Deal (GND) might glide.

We can derisively point to the now-withdrawn FAQ, which the congresswoman’s staff “accidentally” posted on the Web and sent out to reporters. It was “unfinished,” and “erroneously” said the GND would be “guaranteeing . . . Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.“

But of course, read the actual totalitarian-esque House Resolution — calling for “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era” and labeling it “a historic opportunity” — and tell me the silly FAQ isn’t accurate.

The GND promises to “create millions of good, high-wage jobs . . . provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all people . . . and . . . counteract systemic injustices.” It must, of course, after wiping out tens of millions of jobs in private health insurance (2.6 million) and fossil fuels (10 million).

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been so kind as to announce he will bring the GND to a vote in the Senate. Put Senators on record. And more than 100 Democrats in Congress, including four declared presidential candidates — Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — have endorsed the Green New Deal resolution.

Give AOC her due. She has brought fresh young energy to old-fashioned socialism.

And leading Democrats out of the shadows.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New Green Deal, socialism

ideological culture Popular

Pigment Politics

e pluribus unum, democracy, racism, collectivism, individualism

“VOTE LIKE YOU,” read the Election Day sign from last November, pictured above Dan Balz’s Sunday Washington Post column about identity politics.

The implication is clear: one should vote for the candidate with the same skin color, of the same race as your own.

Uh, really?

We do want our elected officials to be “like us.” But in terms of values. Not pigment.

Race is completely meaningless in judging a prospective candidate. I want my candidate to think like me, not win the Paul Jacob Lookalike Contest.

On the other hand, those seeking a new cultural revolution — like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, but based on racial and gender and sexual orientation grievances — think it’s fine to push race-based voting, so long as you aren’t pushing whites and . . . it helps Democrats.

The latest real “culprit” in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat appears to be a lack of enthusiasm and turnout among black voters. Black turnout dropped eight percent from 2012, when President Obama was running for re-election as the first black president, to 2016, when Hillary Clinton, a white woman, was the Democratic standard-bearer.

Balz looked at the 2018 gubernatorial races in Florida and Georgia, where Democrats Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams, respectively, both African American, lost but performed far better than Democrats have in recent years in those states in such races.

“Would a white candidate have done better?” he asked.

Perhaps not. But the whole approach stinks. Identity politics is openly the politics of division. Surely “e pluribus unum” must not be replaced with “ex uno plures.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. For the Latin, which is not straightforward, see Google Translate.

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Photo Credit: detail from US Capital Building Dome

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Tags collectivism, democracy, e pluribus unum, racism

ideological culture political economy too much government

Socialism Doesn’t Work, But…

Post author By Redactor
Post date February 11, 2019
2 Comments on Socialism Doesn’t Work, But…

socialism, force, incentive, Occassio-Cortez

“Socialism” — we all want to be sociable, right?

Last week’s anti-socialist moment was not limited to the president’s promise that America would never go socialist, as I noted this weekend there was also Panera Bread’s abandonment of its quasi-charitable Panera Cares (“pay-what-you-want”) fast food chain.

Isn’t that a bit of a strange connection? Socialism is not charity. It’s bad because it is force through and through, not because it seeks to help people.

Well, note that while Panera’s notion was the same as many socialists’, to help the poor. Panera’s method was to cajole, or “nudge,” the better-off to pay enough more to cover the costs of paying less.

Kinda like ObamaCare, but without the force.

And without the force, it failed.

What Panera management discovered is that not only is it very hard to get the message across, it is almost impossible to set up coherent incentives to successfully alter consumer behavior.

Getting incentives right is something that plagues all sorts of socialistic experiments, voluntary or coercive, within a capitalist society.

Take Finland’s recent experiment with a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

The idea of that nation’s centrist party was to take care of the unemployed beneficiaries’ basic needs so they could get back to work.

Well, those who received the basic income were happy enough receiving the moolah. Sure. But “there was no evidence from the first year of the experiment,” a report in Huffington Post admits, “that the scheme incentivized work.” Despite that, socialists in England are pushing for the UBI.

Socialism doesn’t work, and socialists would rather not work — except to advance socialism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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